The Battle to Save Heritage Areas Continues in 2023 (24th Jan)

Update on Plan Change 78

The Government’s push for further housing intensification continues this year with Auckland Council hearings into Plan Change 78.

The plan change aims to enact the government’s decree to allow further housing intensification throughout Auckland and will lower the current protections of heritage areas like Devonport. Thank you to those who made submissions in September on the proposed plan change.

In December council sent out a summary of the thousands of submissions – 16,401 submissions points in all. Last Friday 20 January was the deadline for making further submissions on some of these.

Devonport Heritage made a further submission on behalf of Devonport people who want to see our Special Character Area protections continue.

We thank planning consultant Dave Serjeant for his dedicated work in working out which of these thousands of submissions we needed to address.

Essentially a further submission is to let council know which of these we have a particular interest in and that we want to be heard on them.

We needed to comment on the submissions from three local building owners in the Devonport Business Area as well as Foodstuffs North Shore and Kainga Ora.

They called for changes to the Height Sensitive Area Overlay so they could develop buildings up to 22 metres high.

We made the point that such excessive building heights would be inappropriate in a special character business area and would affect views of the maunga.

Timetable

The Council has appointed an Independent Hearings Panel to handle the process and make decisions. They are:

Greg Hill chairperson, planner
Sheena Tepania deputy chair, barrister
Richard Knott, urban designer
Karyn Kurzeja, planner
Kitt Littlejohn, planning lawyer
Juliane Chetham, environmental commissioner

Timeline for the year ahead:

February The Panel will give directions for evidence, mediation and other hearing procedures.
April/May Mediation and expert witness conferencing starts
May/June Submission hearings commence
Early 2024 Panel Recommendations go to Auckland Council

The Council will then decide whether to accept the Panel’s decisions. If it does not it can appeal to the Minister for the Environment, currently David Parker.

What You Can Do

It is important that the voices of local people are heard at the hearings so we urge those who made a submission to appear before the Panel. We are happy to help anyone with their in- person submissions.

Some residents may wish to join us as an example of properties that will be adversely affected by losing the Special Character protections.

If you want to do this please contact Margot McRae at mmcrae@xtra.co.nz

Plan Change 82

We have also made a submission on another plan change that the Hearings Panel will consider. This is Plan Change 82 that proposes changes to the Schedule of Historic Heritage Places and affects some Devonport properties.

We are objecting to the downgrading of some buildings and houses from the A schedule to Schedule B.

David and Goliath Battle

Small community societies like Devonport Heritage certainly have a fight ahead as we come up against the deep resources of huge government departments like Kainga Ora and well-heeled property developers.

We are now working on presenting a strong submission to the Hearings Panel to continue to retain the Special Character Area for all of Devonport.

Dave Serjeant will continue his great work for us and we have also engaged heritage architect Graeme Burgess. We also hope to engage a planning lawyer.

There will be costs involved so you can help by making donations to help us with our case to convince the Panel that Devonport is a unique historic area that deserves to be protected for future generations.